Re: SSA Global acquired by Infor

Al,

Your concerns are well stated, and I am sure echo several of the other 
members of this forum. It seems the mode of operation of corporations is 
to "acquire" their competition, rather than spend the same amount of money 
to improve their own product. I agree that government has "turned a deaf 
ear" toward this practice (what was the compelling reason for Oracle to 
purchase PeopleSoft, other than one man's ego) that reflects that business 
has a "free reign", as long as they keep the books in order. I am 
concerned that in this case we have 37,000 customers that now know that 
the cost of this acquisition and the resulting restructuring will come at 
the cost of reduced innovation, product development, and possibly 
increased (OGS) support contracts. 

That's the down side. On the positive side, let's remember that when SSA 
was originally sold there was a lot of speculation that the Gores brothers 
were "bottom feeders" that would strip down and sell off portions of the 
company and then dump the skeleton. That didn't happen. What did happen 
was that a financially unstable company got put back on its feet, and 
setup for new investors to take a chance on building that company into a 
portfolio of ERP choices for their customers. We will always gripe about 
the cost of support, but I have had some very positive "helpdesk" 
incidences resolved in the last year (I guess this is really my concern 
now. Will that change?) with people that really knew the product. At a 
time when business is struggling with global competition and soaring 
energy costs, we need more focus on agile, lean, and extremely flexible 
support systems, not less choices, less innovation, higher support and 
purchase costs for products that have become loosely integrated to try to 
patch several different products purchased by a vendor to eliminated the 
competition. 

Frederick C. Davy, CPIM, PMP
Business Systems Analyst
Interface Solution, Inc.
Phone: (315) 592-8101
Fax: (315) 592-8481
e-mail: fcdavy@xxxxxxxxxxxx




Al Mac <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
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05/16/2006 12:32 PM
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Re: [BPCS-L] SSA Global acquired by Infor






   In addition to this BPCS-L thread, which started at
   http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200605/msg00878.html a parallel
   thread is now in MIDRANGE-L which you can follow from its starting 
point
   http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200605/msg00878.html

   My main concerns
   * For a variety of reasons the Anti-Trust Division of US Justice Dept
   seems to have abandoned the notion that consolidation of an industry 
means
   that in the long run there is less competition, more monopoly, less
   innovation, and that it is their job to do something about that.
   * When two or more ERP competing in market place, and one buys out the
   other, there is a risk that one of the two ERP will be trashed because 
the
   buyer thinks can get more income by moving its customers to the other 
ERP
   than milking the software contracts.  We have seen this in other types 
of
   hardware and software.
   * When a company is supporting a wide range of similar products, it can
   decide to abandon the least profitable one.  We saw this when HP got 
out
   of the midrange market, abandoning tens of thousands of Universities.
   * There is a lot of money to be made from companies that have bought 
into
   ERP with the notion that over time the ERP will be improved, but to 
make
   that income, it does not need to be improved.  Needed improvements: 
better
   integrate with applications that came along after ERP was invented by
   APICS in the 1950's, especially Supply Chain and state-of-art 
engineering
   design; help with corporate governance, such as security and change
   management (both hardware and software), and I can mention others.
   Consider impact of off-shoring on what an enterprise needs, improved
   employee conferencing in a telecommuting world, especially as pandemic
   threats increase.
   * When 2 companies of approx equal size attempt to merge operations
   (remember HP and Compaq?) the process can be extremely disruptive,
   especially if corporate culture dissimilar.  In any merger, a lot of
   corporate memory may be in the heads of employees now lost, and not in
   systems the new owners know how to navigate.
   * Will all the different ERP that are now under one vendor roof be
   supported by the new owners in the style to which the ERP users have 
come
   to expect?

   The news media
   * Infor was a rival of SSA (no surprise to me there)
   * This buyout makes Infor # 3 behind SAP and Oracle.
   * The deal is worth $ 1.36 billion.
   * The combined result is officially 37,000 customers.
   * SSA HQ Chicago is public company with approx 3,500 employees
   * Infor HQ Atlanta is privately held with approx 3,1000 employees

   Quote

     Judy Sweeney, senior vice president of research at Boston-based AMR
     Research, said Infor is likely to cut top management, marketing and 
some
     sales jobs in Chicago

   AMR is only one of many research outfits in this area ... I expect some
   business reporters may soon be interviewing more people at
   Aberdeen Group http://www.aberdeen.com/default.asp
   AMR http://www.amrresearch.com/Default.asp?bhcp=1
   http://www.atkearney.com/
   Deloitte
   http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/home/0%2C1044%2Csid%25253D1000%2C00.html
   Forrester http://www.forrester.com/my/1,,1-2,FF.html
   Gartner http://www.gartner.com/Init
   IDC http://www.idc.com/
   http://www.sageza.com/
   Financial Industry http://www.towergroup.com/research/index.jsp
   Yankee Group http://www.yankeegroup.com/
   etc. to get their take on all this, since these outfits have all done
   extensive research on implications of consolidation of the ERP 
marketplace

   http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-ssa16.html

   
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0605160187may16,1,390617.story?coll=chi-business-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true


   http://www.technewsworld.com/story/50541.html

   Check news in the search engines. 
   SSA is not the only recent or current aquisition by Infor.

   -
   Al Macintyre
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AlMac
   http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
   BPCS/400 Computer Janitor ... see
   http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html